


The First Face

by FinalOwen



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 04:43:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1497061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinalOwen/pseuds/FinalOwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One fateful New Year's Eve, Pete saw something impossible in a San Francisco morgue, and his life was never the same again. But would he ever be able to find out what really happened that night?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Face

The TV was the only source of light in the room, casting its glow over the garbage-strewn floor and the heavyset young man sitting on the couch. He was half-asleep, barely focusing on the wrestling show. His eyes closed for a moment, but as the flickering of the old TV set danced across his eyes like lightning, he suddenly jolted upright, rubbing his eyes and trying to focus once again on the show, trying to keep himself awake. There was some famous impressionist pretending to be one of the wrestlers, only for the real thing to come to the ring and attack his would-be doppelgänger. Hardly inspiring stuff. He reached for the remote, and started flicking through channels. Reality show, shopping channel, reality show, Frankenstein- Beset by panic, he stabbed at the remote quickly, turning the TV off and throwing the room into sudden darkness.

Somewhere along the line, Pete had lost control of his life.

No, not somewhere along the line. He could point to the exact day his cosy existence had been sent spiralling off the rails. December 31st, 1999. Just a normal night shift at work – well, as normal as handling dead bodies for a living could get – and all of a sudden, the world was no longer a place that made sense. 

He'd tried to bury it away, to rationalise it. Grace had tried to tell him that the man he'd seen was the bodysnatcher himself, but that hadn't convinced him. How far would they get wearing shrouds, for God's sake? He must have imagined it. That was it. Had to be. What else can you expect when you work with corpses and fall asleep watching Frankenstein? Just his subconscious running wild. Maybe he'd heard the noise the bodysnatchers had made, and his brain had filled in the gaps. Made sense. Sure, maybe he'd never know who was responsible, but he could live with that. San Francisco was a big city, stuff like that happened all the time, right?

But still, the doubts remained. No matter how much he thought of other explanations, when he closed his eyes to sleep, he was back in the mortuary on that fateful night. He could still see the man's confused face in his mind's eye. Hear the crash of the metal door as it was thrown off its hinges. Feel the faint fizzle of electricity in the air. The pain in his back from when he'd fainted flat out and flopped onto the floor of the morgue. He remembered every detail, right down to the toe tag that had confirmed what he already knew... What was the quote again from the Romero film? When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth?

Not that he'd watched many horror movies since. The battered VHS collection had been the first thing to go from his shelves. No more zombies, no more Frankenstein, no more vampires... 

Vampires. That was the next domino that fell, taking any sense of normality with it. 

Once he could no longer bring himself to pretend that the fateful night was his imagination, he'd taken to the message boards to see if anyone else had ever seen this person. His vivid memory of the scene had actually helped for once, and he'd been able to come up with a clear description of the man. He hadn't told them everything, of course, they'd never believe the full story. But saying it was the bodysnatcher, people began to feel like they were amateur detectives, and slowly but surely, posts trickled in. 

Not all of them were much use, of course. There were pranks, there were guesses that seemed way too off base to be of any use. Pete couldn't see much use in chasing leads on whether he was a British actor or an alien from outer space. But then there had been something that actually sounded plausible. Someone claimed to have seen him right there in San Francisco. Pete had barely believed his luck, and arranged to meet them as quick as they could exchange contact details.

* * *

His contact had met him in a local park, a lanky gothy-looking girl, carrying an large decorated binder with her. They'd greeted each other awkwardly – Pete inwardly cursed, he had always been good at talking to girls before his social life had fallen off the rails – and they sat down on the park bench as she showed him what she'd brought along. Apparently she'd been researching things for longer than he had. Some disturbance in a club she'd frequented years back, all started off by a guy yelling about vampires and military. Everyone had been herded out of the club, and most people had been convinced it was a police raid. Oh sure, he'd mentioned vampires, but it was all the rage to pretend to be a creature of the night back then. But she'd looked deeper, especially after the club had closed for unexplained reasons. As she'd delved deeper, it turned out that most of the staff had recently died of unexplained causes, and when she'd tried to find out more, most of the documentation for the building and its CCTV records had been snatched up beforehand.

At this point, she'd started thinking of the man who had started the commotion on that night. The reason she'd got in touch was that the description immediately reminded her of the man. Curly chestnut hair, piercing green eyes, and an unusual outfit. An patterned waistcoat and long velvet coat, and expertly tied cravat. Back then, she thought it was fancy dress, but by this point she was convinced it was the genuine article, Edwardian or Victorian probably, and this was when her voice had gone deathly quiet as she lined out her theory. 

“You see, I think he was the real thing.”

“What, Victorian?”

“No, dummy. Think about it. He turns up to a club where everyone pretends to be a vamp, dressed like someone from hundreds of years ago, and suddenly everyone who ran the club dies? What if he really was hundreds of years old? What if he was an actual Vampire, trying to get rid of his imitators?”

“You've gotta be kidding me.”

* * *

Pete had gone home at that point, ignoring her protests as she flipped through the binder running after him, until he was back in the apartment, frustrated by another dead-end. Sure, her description sounded similar to the body snatcher, but a vampire? His full story may have been eccentric, but hers was ludicrous. Vampires stalking the streets of San Francisco? As if. 

Or so he'd thought. He regretted his hasty goodbye now. Sure, it sounded ludicrous, but it was still the closest thing to a solid lead he had... And that was when San Francisco had started to get weird. Slowly at first, but eventually it was hard to deny that something was happening to the city. You'd look out of your window, and swear that you'd just seen a dragon flying past. The first time it had happened, Pete had blinked and shook his head, assuming it was a plane. Then it happened again. And then, just a few short months ago, he was walking home from getting his shopping, and had a bag stolen by a horse... Except... It wasn't a horse. Horses didn't generally have a single large horn on the front of their heads, just right for sticking through the handles of a carrier bag and running off with it.

That was when Pete stopped going out. He'd venture outdoors every week to grab the bare essentials he needed, and he'd live in his little one bedroom apartment, selling his stocks of movie memorabilia to make his rent money, his hospital job long forgotten. It couldn't last forever, but he was getting by, just about.

Maybe he was wrong, back then. Vampires didn't seem all that out-there. When you've had your shopping stolen by a unicorn, you could believe just about anything. He wondered if her story was true, if the man really was a vampire. Had he grown old over the years, becoming the man he'd rolled into the freezer, before rejuvenating and walking out a young man? Or was he really a space alien after all, with a penchant for fancy dress? Hadn't Ted's costume gone missing that night? Maybe the stranger had taken it.

No, he told himself. This was crazy. Maybe he was crazy. Maybe he'd been imagining San Francisco's strangeness all this time, driven mad by the search for answers, by the mysterious man who had turned his life upside down. He got up and grabbed his keys. He'd prove it to himself. All the weird things came out at night, right? He'd wander round and see if he really could see anything strange, and he'd try and get someone to tell him they could see it too. If they couldn't, he'd march right back to Walker General and check himself in, as a patient this time. And if he came across a vampire out there in the darkness, well, at least he wouldn't be wondering any more.

He walked out of the building, full of adrenaline, turned a corner, and walked straight into a solid wooden object. He stumbled back, groaning. Who'd left this thing on the pavement? He looked up at the blue police box, confused as to what it even was. As he paced round the box, wondering if it counted as proof of San Francisco's strangeness, the door swung open, and a man stepped out, looking concerned. Pete boggled. The man was a little older, his hair shorter and ragged, not wearing a shroud but rather a blue leather navy jacket and jeans, but it was the same man. It was the one who had changed his life, all those years ago. Here in front of him.

“You... You look familiar.” said the man, in a cultured, silky voice. “I know you, don't I?”

“I- I...” Pete stuttered, his mouth strangely dry. Was this really happening?

“Ah! Of course! You were... You were the first face this face saw! In the morgue! I knew I knew you! You're seared onto my hearts!”

Pete fainted, no longer able to take everything in.

The Doctor's face fell as he looked down at Pete's prone form. “Poor fellow. I must remember to reign in the melodrama in future...”

**Author's Note:**

> I've tried writing this a few times, only for it to fizzle out halfway through. After reading Vampire Science and Unnatural History by Jon Blum and Kate Orman, there was a bit more going on in San Francisco to latch onto and continue Pete's story, so I'm indebted to them. Finally Pete can get the answers he deserves. Too bad Eight's amnesia meant he didn't remember never to deliver that line again!
> 
> Doctor Who belongs to the BBC, and I assume Pete is caught in the same legal kerfuffle about whether he's owned by the BBC or Fox that Grace and Chang Lee are in.


End file.
